Sunday, February 12, 2012

Video timeline of Arizona earthquakes, 1852-2011

We showed this video yesterday at the AIPG-Arizona Section annual meeting held in the AZGS offices in Tucson, and it got a lot of favorable comments. So, I want to share it with you.

Jordan Matti compiled it using the new Microsoft Layerscape software (we've been working with Microsoft Research for the past 3 years on visualization of scientific data). We used an Excel spreadsheet of historical seismic data compiled by Phil Pearthree, Jeri Young, and Lisa Linville.

The older quakes are culled from historical records, and thus are limited to only those large enough to be felt or caused damage. In the past few decades, locations are from seismometers in the region. And in the past few years, we now have statewide coverage that ensures we are detecting all earthquakes in Arizona larger than magnitude 3 and probably most of the ones larger than 2.5. Thus, in the video, you will see a dramatic increase in activity at the end of the timeline - it's a result of recording the smaller events that we were missing before.

There is no hydraulic fracturing going on in Arizona. There has never been any production using hydraulic fracturing in the state, although a few exploratory wells apparently tried the technique to see if they could create production decades ago. None did, and the wells were plugged and abandoned without ever producing.

Steve Rauzi at AZGS is preparing a fact sheet on hydraulic fracturing to address the many inquiries we receive about the practice. We'll publicize that when it's released.